Method and apparatus for capturing and rendering annotations for non-modifiable electronic content: 6,957,233

It's always sad when companies focus more on litigating rather than innovating. I mean, seriously, does anyone think that, without patents, people wouldn't have made these kinds of advancements? These aren't advancements that requires a patent at all. These are the kinds of advancements that happen naturally in the marketplace due to competition and multiple companies competing to offer a better product to customers.

Of course, it's nice to see the response on Microsoft's own blog involves comments trashing Microsoft for this decision. Scrolling down the comments, almost all of them are incredibly negative against Microsoft, pointing out that these patents are obvious, that Microsoft should be ashamed of itself for suing, and people swearing off Microsoft products for being a patent bully. Perhaps Microsoft might want to think its patent litigation strategy in recognizing that it's not particularly well received by consumers.

The comments really are great, but my favorite may be: "None of this BS will get anyone to buy a Windows phone anyway." And that's kind of the point. Microsoft should focus on innovating. Not bitching about what competitors are doing better than it did.

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]]>fight-fight-fighthttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110321/17072713576Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:33:49 PDTConfused Users Keep Racking Up Ridiculous 3G Bills, Wireless Carriers Keep Helping ThemKarl Bodehttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100422/1122419143.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100422/1122419143.shtmlsemi-famous ones) who wind up with fairly insane wireless broadband bills for any number of reasons. Usually the stories involve someone traveling overseas and not understanding the roaming charges and overages involved, though sometimes the users don't even need to leave port to find themselves hit with a $27,000 3G bill. The latest story of this type (via the Consumerist) involves a user getting a $7,865.84 Verizon Wireless bill after taking his Mifi portable 3G hotspot on a business trip to Tel Aviv. In this case however, the user called Verizon before the trip, studied the overage penalties, and still wound up using 350,000 kb of bandwidth before concluding it was Verizon who screwed up:

"The ugly truth is that upon investigating the issue, I found a number of things could have been done by Verizon to protect me as a consumer. They may not mention them outright, but they are there. The fact that these things were not done can only lead me to assume that Verizon would rather their consumers "understand" as little as possible about their TOS.'"

Except as a consumer, it's his responsibility to read the find print on his contract and understand the limitations and penalties of his plan. The user studied the charges, spoke with representatives -- even seemed to have at least a base understanding of what he was going to be charged per kilobyte -- and then chose to use expensive 3G data on an overseas trip anyway. Consumer responsibility and research plays a big part of the equation.

That said, we've been saying for a long time now that these bills demonstrate the fact that carriers aren't doing a particularly good job making service limits clear or educating customers. Many consumers (more than you would think) can't tell the difference between a kilobyte and a lemur, and Verizon's math skills on this front aren't always reliable to begin with. While most carriers have some kind of mechanism in place to help notify users of excessive usage, carriers haven't done a great job notifying users when their bill starts to go nuclear (like many credit card companies do when a large charge appears on your card) or making overages clear. Fortunately, carriers often agree to slash these bills -- but usually only after they receive media attention.

In the UK, where they've seen the same kind of insane 3G bills, regulators have jumped in and addressed the problem by first capping roaming charges -- but then by also requiring (as of July 1) that carriers allow users to set a monthly maximum cap that limits how much they can spend on data each month. Consumers get an automated alert as they approach 80% of that total, then their service is temporarily suspended when the user crosses the spending cap. If users don't choose a limit, a limit of $68 per month is set for them (that's only data and doesn't include voice minutes or other bill totals). Of course here in the States carriers aren't going to want to voluntarily employ tools that reduce how much money they can make off of confused users, and will fight any regulation that limits how much they can charge. So nothing changes, and story after story emerges about users whose phone bills resemble the GDP of small countries.